summer
by CeliaBlair24
Summary: Summer Rose is missing and Qrow needs Raven's help to find her.


Raven's first memories of summer were of rainfall. Patchy grey clouds that shone through circling cracks between the foliage, the quagmire that made up the once-home that had been her birth village. Summer, she knew, came with simmering heat and a humidity that clung to skin and cloth both, searing red the paths where once thick bushes grew. Mornings that burned and afternoons that cooled; nights that lasted only long enough to break the chains of heat, waiting for the cycle to start over again.

Summer for their backwater had been defined by death, or just-nearly. By the flooding of the great Man'nen, or by the searing heat of the summer sun.

"She's missing."

Yet this was a different sort of summer.

"What do you mean missing?"

This summer was unlike anything she'd ever seen along the western coasts of Anima. Dry, instead of humid, and cooled over by circuiting northern air currents. A flush spreads across her cheeks, the tell-tale whispers of this-cannot-be overriding her otherwise utterly inebriated state of mind.

She doesn't quite see the splinters biting into skin from where her palms slam against the taverns rickety wooden table, but she feels them all the same. Pain pricking through the thick of sword-born callouses like burnt needles right off the desk of a (particularly) suicidal masseur.

"I mean what I said."

Qrow slumps into the chair opposite her, broad sword slung over his shoulder, his head in his hands. He grumbles some, a gesture of his fingers and one beady red eye peeking out from under an arm has the taverns server girl running around the bar, searching for something especially strong.

The amount of times her brother would have needed to come here to form such an understanding with the girl, well, Raven didn't want to know.

Not that she could have, anyway.

"What happened?"

Wind from outside sears through the taverns opened door in thick whips of three, whistling along the roads with a breath cold enough to ice over the glass windows, had there been any humidity here to speak of.

Qrow sighs, draws himself up only enough to meet her by the eyes.

"Oz sent her out a week ago, comms went down three days back."

He looked terrible. Scruffy, pale, eyes ruddy even under the taverns shit lighting. His shoulders slump in a way she hasn't seen since they'd been…much younger. Like he was drawing into himself, making himself appear smaller behind the rough of old wood. Slowly, Raven herself takes a seat, quiet as the server girl returns, bottle in hand and a sympathetic smile that reached pretty blue-grey eyes. Hm.

"What mission?"

Her questions could wait. For now, the cold—like ice spreading within her, freezing off blood and breath, her aura stuttering in its flow, wanting, wanting to be wrong, wrong, wrong— she had to address it, if only to ease the anxiety building within her. Yet, from the looks of him (really, from the very fact that he'd considered getting help from her), maybe the ease was a long while coming.

"Confidential. It—"

Like being doused in ice water, bruised black and blue from hail and cold, like being drenched to her very bones.

"Ozpin keeps a lot of secrets."

She starts slowly.

And so do you….

"If you want my help, you'll be a little more transparent with me here."

The not-storm picks up outside, sand flushing through wind-swept streets in a storm of red and brown. Raven sees it all from the craggy little glass window by the side of the door, the glass cracked and leaking red dust onto the wet-wood floors. She feels before she hears them, the screams tearing through the town. Shrill and angry. Fear so, so palpable.

"No."

Qrow glares down at her, sword drawn and clutched tightly in a white-knuckled fist. Raven doesn't bother getting up, looking him instead in the eye, her famed twin brother, already so quick to up and help and leave her here to the cold of this supposed, cursed summer.

"Don't give me that look. You wanna go out there and play hero?"

A gloved hand flares out, swiping at cool air with a fury. The untouched bottle of bourbon barely moves with the jostling.

"Fine. I'm not gonna stop you."

Qrow's lips purse, even as he looks on the knives end of a temper tantrum.

"But know that if you go, you break our deal and I take my leave."

The fight doesn't drain out of him, not quite. But they were siblings, born of the same blood, Branwen tribe. She knew her brother better than she knew herself, in near every way. No matter what path he'd chosen, how far it'd differed from her own. She knew Qrow. And she knew now, matching blazing red eyes with her own, that however many suckers died out there, he wouldn't leave. Not now.

Still so selfish. Heh.

"Oz didn't give any specifics."

He bites out, fiddling with the trigger by the handle of his blade. The bourbon, she notes almost-amused, remained untouched.

Serious though. So serious.

"But I know where she was and I know—"

He pauses. Shakes his head. Though his eyes stayed so steadfastly elsewhere, his hands flash with a practiced precision, swiping at the bourbon and chugging it down straight from the bottle.

"Gods."

He shudders, straightens a little more in his chair.

"She was gathering information. The witch's been picking up strays, and she was clumsy enough to leave a paper trail."

It was like she couldn't breathe, push though the wind did outside. Like getting the aura sucked out of her, essence and all, leaving her a hollow shell of nothing. No anger, no sadness.

Numb.

"He sent her?"

The words come quietly. A whisper she could barely make out from the pounding of her head, the so-thinly concealed, utter fury within. How could he? How could he?

"Raven,"

She doesn't scream. Doesn't cry. Maybe it was something about her expression, the paleness of her cheeks, the usual cloudedness of intoxication she could no longer feel. Maybe it was that Qrow knew her like she knew Qrow, because he was reaching out suddenly, palms out, fingers splayed and ready as if he could catch her over the table if she fell.

"I warned you."

But the anger wasn't there. The thinness of her mask like a steel barrier, blotting out every emotion she could possibly feel. Except Cold. Cold like summer here, no heat and no rain. Brazen winds that form not-storms, which surge through sand and streets in coiling, cold northern fury. Northern, like lips pursed, stiff and jaded and shuttered from the rest of Remnant, stuck on a lost war and a people never meant to be free.

Northern and different, the opposite of the burning rage of the western coasts, and the cool calm of Vale.

Summer.

Summer Rose.

Summer Rose was missing.

"I know,"

Qrow's eyes on her, wide and red and like he cared about how she felt, even if he'd ignored she existed those long years since she'd given her family away. A daughter she never wanted, a husband she never had.

Summer Rose was missing.

"Okay."

Black beasts hurdle against the taverns hastily barricaded door, thumping against wood with bone white horns, red eyes blazing through splintering cracks.

Their howls resound like a crackle of lightning, searing through the storm-bound air.

"I'll help."


End file.
